Dark Thread

by Crymsyn Hart

  “Marie’s been Legba’s pawn for a very long time. Although of late, she’s been very useful. Isn’t that right, Marie?” Morta said to the other necromancer.

  Marie bowed her head in deference to the two Fates. “Yes, Mistresses.”

  “I thought you were here to help me.” Darria wasn’t sure about what she was seeing. She thought this woman was her friend. “I’m sorry, Darria. The Fates have given me a chance to finally get out from under Papa Legba’s clutches. I’m tired of doing his bidding after all these centuries. You have no idea what I go through, being at his beck and call.”

  “But he sent you here to help me with my necromancy. You said he wasn’t that bad.”

  Marie pulled up her sleeve and showed Darria the two remaining poppies on her arm. “I’m living on borrowed time. It’s true. Legba sent me here to help you the same way Hekate came to you so that you could be whole.”

  “Then....” Darria gazed back at the Fates, trying to wrap her head around the whole thing. She had to put Marie out of her mind. Instead, she had to focus on the two women before her. That was the real reason that the objects had remained on her hand. The objects themselves must have known what was going on. Legba said the items were personally from the gods themselves. Marie had told her a story of a god being one and then breaking apart into separate pieces. Eight separate pieces. Darria glanced down at her arm and thought about what she had learned in her memories and who the figure had been in the shadows in Omar’s tomb in her memories.

  “Oh shit,” Darria murmured.

  “Something wrong?” Decima asked.

  “N-nothing. I was thinking.” There had to be a way for her to get the eighth piece or at least scatter the other pieces on her arm. Something had to be done because she didn’t think that the existence of one big, bad death god was going to fly in this day and age.

  “Really? I know that look. I’ve seen it before. I was there when you were watching the gorgons and realized their destinies. You know we want all eight pieces to be put back together.” Morta flicked another sprite with her fingers until it was on the ground and was about to step on it when the house shook.

  “By the gods, what is that?” Decima shouted. The house shook again, sending dishes crashing off the top of the cabinets.

  Darria rushed at Morta, shoving her out of the way, and raced down into the basement.

  One of the Fates screamed something, and an object flew by her, brushing her cheek. A wad of webbing stuck to the door frame as she rushed down the stairs. They were right behind her. The house shook once more. Darria grabbed ahold of the wall when she got to the bottom of the staircase. She opened the door, slammed the inner one shut, and locked it. There was no other way in or out of the cellar unless she used her key. The enchantments around her workroom were the strongest. She needed to get out of the house and find Rory and Oliver. She assumed the third Fate was the one holding them hostage.

  The Wunderkammer rattled from the force that quaked the house, and the contents jangled together inside. It drew her attention to the curio cabinet. Everything was sealed up tight and protected inside. The cabinet was glass and wood, but it had great magic that protected itself from any intruders who didn’t have a key. If the memories and the jar had been sealed up, it would be safe to assume the jar was somewhere within the cabinet.

  One of the Fates banged on the door. “You won’t get away from us. We’ll get you and the eighth piece.” The voice was muffled, but Darria didn’t doubt that they could pull her strings. She was not going to be their puppet.

  Darria traced the key on her arm until it fell into her palm. She ignored the banging and stared at the Wunderkammer. Even through the glass doors, she could see all the objects on the shelves. However, the canopic jar was not one of them. The magical energy of the cabinet grated along her skin. “Look, whatever you’ve got going on here, you know that I’m not going to take anything that doesn’t belong to me or the other undertakers. I need that jar. It’s in you somewhere. Please let me have it.”

  Darria slid the key into the cabinet. When she turned it, the lock didn’t move. Maybe it was thinking about her request. She wasn’t exactly sure where its allegiance lay, but when the lock clicked, the doors bounced open. “Thank you.”

  The house shuddered again. Out of the corner of her eye, Darria saw a flicker of movement. The entire door was moving. Thousands of tiny spiders, no larger than a pinhead, were coming at her. Darria started stomping on them. Each one issued a little scream. As they got closer to the Wunderkammer, purple arcs of lightning struck the spiders. The shelves rearranged themselves swiftly as the cabinet shuffled through all its contents. Little arachnids crawled over her shoes, and she stepped on more. The rearranging stopped.

  “Give us the jar,” Morta entreated her.

  Darria grabbed the jar and held it to her chest. She turned back to see that the spiders had woven together into a woman. Darria took a breath and ran through her, scattering the spiders so that they had to reform.

  “Upstairs, Darria. I can get you out of here,” Gabbie called to her.

  Darria pushed on the brick wall, and it opened to reveal the stairs that led to the second-floor office. However, when she pulled the door open at the top, she wasn’t in her office but in her bedroom. Gabbie hovered outside her window. She put the jar down for a second and shoved her window open so that she could escape. Little spiders crawled up the walls. They had found her. She grabbed the jar and jumped out the window.

  “Gotcha.” Gabbie swooped underneath her and caught her.

  They flew away from the house. The screams of the Fates followed her as they flew out of reach. “Where are we going?”

  “Someplace they can’t get to us,” the gargoyle answered.

  “They’re the Fates. They can get to us everywhere. All they need to do is find my thread, and then, they can find me.”

  “Then we might have to think about cutting your thread.” Gabbie flew higher until they were going toward the graveyard. The energy shifted around them when they crossed over the threshold. She headed further back into the necropolis until Darria could no longer see the houses. All that was below her were other graves, and it was difficult for her to breathe. The shapes of the tombstones changed. They were older, something that she would have seen from a long-dead civilization. It was though they had traveled out of time. They had somehow passed into a different part of the burial ground, and all she wanted was to have Oliver there with her.

  The gargoyle moved down into the boneyard and settled on the outskirts of a crossroads. “How were you able to bring me here?”

  “I wouldn’t have been able to do it if it wasn’t for Oliver. He told me how to get here.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “He’s fine for now. Nona hasn’t hurt him. I think she’s too afraid because even she is subject to death. We overheard her and her sisters talking about what they wanted to do. Oliver suggested I bring you here because you needed to talk to Hekate. We figured this was the closest place I could get you.”

  Darria looked at the jar. The paintings on it were weathered from time, but the inscription said the same thing. “Breath of life that only death can control,” she whispered.

  “And it will if you break the wax seal and join it with the other pieces you have on your arm,” the voice behind her said.

  She turned and saw Hekate at the crossroads. The demigod appeared older, dressed in a black tunic lined with silver. Her hair hung free and fluttered in the breeze. “Isn’t that what you want? You and Legba have been lying to me from the beginning. Why even pull out my other side if you were going to fuck with me after? The Fates knew what I was and tested me with the man I ... with my harvester to see if I could revive him.”

  “And you did, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but that’s not the point.”

  “Actually, it is the point. If you’re strong enough to heal a harvester, the embodiment of death, it means that you’re more than a necr
omancer.”

  She didn’t need any more complications in her life. “Well, what the hell am I, then? What happens if I break open this jar and get the last piece of the god you came from?”

  “We weren’t lying to you, Darria. Legba and I are the only ones left. The Fates have taken care of the other gods. I don’t know how they did it, probably because the others were never smart enough to tie themselves down to other things. Legba has his club, and the mortals he shows favor to, he gives them the rose. I can’t fade away. I make it a point to be within the mortal realm and imprint myself on other things, so I can survive. Even if the other gods had survived and all the pieces are put back together again, then he will be resurrected. We wouldn’t be absorbed back into him. We are no longer a part of the whole. It’s the same way with the objects that I took to the Fates. That’s the reason I took them in the first place, so they would become something else. It seemed my intention didn’t wholly work. The objects themselves have taken on the magic Fate imparted them with and are still tied to us. They also contain the essence of the god we originated from. Time has changed things.”

  “Okay. They are separate and yet a big part of the whole. What’s in the jar, and what does it mean if I put all the pieces together?” Darria ran her finger over the wax seal, and it easily flaked away. She set it on the ground next to Gabbie, so she would guard it.

  Hekate stretched out her hand. “Take my hand. I can show you things better than I can tell you.”

  Darria stepped back. The Fates and this other woman wanted her for their own devices. “I don’t think so. You’re telling me what I want to hear. Tell me the truth, or I’m going to call someone who will.”

  “Who are you going to call, cher?” Legba crooned next to her. Gabbie growled at the other god. Legba stepped away and held up his hands. “Forgive me. I’m not going to harm her.”

  “Did you know that Marie is working with the Fates?” Darria asked the mischief maker.

  “Is that what you think?” He flashed her a small, knowing smile.

  “They said she was double-timing you.” All around her were graves. The spirits of those who lingered in this place called to her. She could easily pull them from the ground and surround herself with an army if she needed to. “Marie even admitted it to me.”

  “Double agent, love. I needed the Fates to trust her. They don’t hold her thread. I do. Her soul is mine. It has been for a long time. You’re correct that we haven’t been straightforward with you. I think—”

  “Legba, now is not the time,” Hekate barked.

  The other god turned to her. “Now is exactly the time. This was something we feared from the beginning. It’s the reason why you wanted her dead in the first place. You had your suspicions. I wanted her so that we could have her under control and then this wouldn’t have happened, but here we are. If we don’t reveal the consequences, then we can be in deeper shit than we already are.”

  Hekate glared at Papa Legba. He didn’t break the stare, but it was obvious that the other goddess was displeased. The way things were now, it was a bunch of bull, and she was getting tired of it. The longer she was around the jar, the more she got an itchy feeling in the back of her mind. Darria knew in the pit of her stomach that she would eventually open the container. It must have been spelled because it gnawed at her. If she did, she would become Pandora opening the box.

  “Tell me or don’t tell me, but I’m going to smash this thing in a minute if you don’t.” Darria reached down to pick up the jar once more.

  “Don’t, please. You won’t know what you are unleashing,” Hekate warned.

  “Then tell me the truth,” Darria demanded.

  “She does deserve to know,” a cool voice said next to her. The power of it prickled her flesh. It belonged to the one being who had the power of the universe at his fingertips. His energy was very different from the other gods. It was colder and much more akin to what she worked with. It was a truer sense of death.

  “You have no power here, Azrael,” Legba said to him.

  The Angel of Death chuckled. His voice was low, but the sound of it shook her bones. “I think it’s you who is forgetting that this realm is neutral.”

  Legba lifted an eyebrow. “Really? Even after the trouble you had?”

  Darria gazed between them, wondering what it was they meant, but by the red coloring in Azrael’s normally black eyes, she didn’t think it would be a good idea to ask. “That was another matter. Just be glad you weren’t involved in it, too. Would you want to suffer the same fate as some of the others?”

  “Nothing to be hasty about. I was against it. Besides, it was a different universe with different ideas of death. I think the humans say, ‘Not my circus, not my monkeys.’ Besides, that is why you only have reign over the harvesters or whatever it is that you want to call the angels who collect the souls here.”

  The angel stepped forward, and his wings flared outward until they settled back at his side into the shape of a trench coat. “I realize I have no power over you except with my harvesters, but I’m here representing Darria in that capacity. Her harvester is currently being held captive because of the antics of the Fates.”

  Darria shook her head. “I know you said there were other dimensions, but if there is another version of Fate in another realm, are they doing the same thing? Are they like the Fates here?”

  Azrael glanced at her. “We’re not here to discuss the other realities or the versions of other things in those parallel dimensions. You need someone to speak for you in this endeavor because Oliver isn’t available.”

  “How do you know that?” Darria asked.

  He flashed her a smile that let her know he wasn’t going to answer that part of her question. “I think we should let Papa Legba and Hekate give you the full truth instead of the twists and turns of the tales that you’ve been feeding her. I do have the power to make you do that. In the end, I am still Death. No deals are to be made. Answer her questions and tell her what will happen if she reunites the eight pieces.”

  Hekate frowned. “Fine.”

  “Legba?” Azrael looked at him.

  “I have no problem with that, Azrael. As you say, you can make us tell the truth.”

  “Tell me the whole truth about being a necromancer. Why did you really want to kill me before?” Darria stepped closer to Azrael because she felt more comfortable. He also negated some of the itchiness she felt when she came near the jar.

  “You were born with the innate ability to be a necromancer. You did the ritual that awakened your powers with the boy you had loved. If you had been on that path and were not fated to be an undertaker, you might’ve never known about your powers. I sensed you in the world, as I normally do those who have necromantic abilities. You were powerful enough once you awakened your abilities to raise one or two corpses. Nothing that could truly do damage unless you made a deal with lesser entities to garner more power. You ran from your abilities. When you became an undertaker, it boosted your powers to an almost unfathomable level. If you know about the jar, then you realize that a necromancer tried to unite the pieces once before. He only had three of them, but the gods weren’t that weak back then.

  “After him, we realized we had to watch other potential necromancers to see if they would become a threat; it was a choice to either bring the necro under our control or kill them.”

  Darria nodded. “When I displayed the power during the rite and raised a couple hundred corpses, I was put on your watch list.”

  “Yes,” Legba replied. “You took over your harvester. You were powerful enough that someone else would notice. Stockton begged us for a second chance for you. He said there was more good in you than darkness. I relented. Stock’s a good hunter and never asked us for anything. I tested him to see how you would do with the banshees. Two birds with one stone. I owed the banshee queen a boon. If you succumbed to your dark side pushing onto a banshee, then even your balance as an undertaker in the gray couldn’t save you. I swo
re to Stockton that if you passed the test, we’d spare you on the promise that he wasn’t supposed to intervene. You passed, and we keep our promises. We punished him because he interfered.”

  “Stockton made a choice and altered your destiny. You touched death in the literal sense,” Hekate glanced at Azrael and then back at her, “and it touched a deeper part of you, strengthening your abilities on all fronts, yet you hadn’t succumbed to your darker power. You fought with the necromantic side of you. It made you different. The only choice was to get you on our side.”

  Darria understood why they had done what they did. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to tell me all of this? If all eight pieces get back together, then the world is going to be in some deep shit. I don’t want the world to end any more than you do. If you had been up-front about this, I would’ve trusted you.”

  “As the Fates like to tell us, this might have all been manipulated by them in a delicate way that none of us knew about. Even though we put your two halves together, they haven’t really fused. You could still go all dark side of the force, as you put it. We still have to be sure that you are on our side,” Hekate explained.

  “She’s the one, Hekate. As much as you don’t want to admit it,” Legba commented.

  Darria glanced at Azrael. He remained impassive and flashed her a small smile, not showing a hint of his sharpened teeth. Gabbie lay quiet with her paws locked around the jar, so no one would touch it. She glanced at her arms and saw that the tattoos were glowing in the overcast graveyard. The magic in them warmed up as they talked and continued to be near the eighth piece. “Okay. I’ve got all scattered pieces of this fallen god on my arm. Why does Fate want to put them together? And what am I since you haven’t answered that question?”

  “The Fates want you to put the pieces together so that they can have power over Chaos. They want to channel the power and recreate the universe in their own image.”

  “How can they channel chaos?”